Welcome to DR's note, your weekly dose of knowledge from Circuit Stitch Blog.

 

This week we talk about rebooting.

Rebooting or restarting your PC is one of the easiest things you can do to your computer to fix many problems.  Lets talk about some of the issues that can be resolved just by turn your computer off and then on again.  First off if your PC seems slow or sluggish by rebooting it, it could reset the RAM cache.  What this means is that the cache (the part of the RAM that stores temporary data) get used up and so it has to get rid of the older stuff on the cache before putting the new stuff on for you to use.  This will slow down the process a little bit which in turn will make you say "why is this so slow today".  Another issue that could be fixed with a reboot is application errors.  If you are using an app, let us say like Chrome, and it doesn't seem to be running quiet right?  By rebooting your computer it could help fix any errors that were caused by it not loading up properly.  Some other reasons you would need to restart you computer would be because you installed a new piece of software, you updated your OS (operating system) or software, or memory leaks(when a program doesn't close properly and it makes your computer slow  down). 

So how often should you reboot your computer and how do you reboot it?  Let's address the first question, you should reboot you computer at least once a week.  If you are shutting down your computer at the end of the week that would work for you reboot.  Now let us discuss how to reboot you computer.  For windows users(which is all the computers at SMC) you want to click the windows logo at the bottom left corner of the screen.  Then click the power icon, once you have clicked it then a small menu will pop up with sleep, shutdown, and restart.  Click restart and your set.  Also you could just press Ctrl+Alt+Del, you will have a screen pop up and at the bottom right you will see the power icon.  Click on it and then you will have the three choices again, just click restart and your set.  For Mac users click the apple logo at the top right of the screen, then you'll see a drop down menu, you will see the restart prompt towards the bottom of the menu.  And that's how you reboot you computer, I hope this helps to understand why you need to reboot your computer.    Thank you and have a great day.

Welcome to DR's note, your weekly dose of knowledge from Circuit Stitch Blog.

This weeks DR note is how to tell you've been hacked.

With cyber crime on the rise I am here to show you how you can tell if someone could have access to  your computer or device.  Let us start off by going to a website https://haveibeenpwned.com , with this site you can put in your email address and see if it was found in any data breach's.  If so then you want to change the passwords to these accounts, and if you use the same password for other account you should change them too.  Like I've said before you want to get yourself a password manager.    Also on that website is a list of other sites that have had data breaches, so you can check to see if one of the sites you visit often is on there.   You can even set up a Google alert for data breach, that way when they happen you can be on top of it. 

Those are a couple of ways to tell if you've been hacked, but what do you do if you have been hacked.  First off notify family, friends, and any one that follows you on social media platforms.  By doing this it helps to keep others from getting hacked as well, with them thinking that they are interacting with you.  Secondly if they demand a ransom for your information on your computer, DO NOT PAY IT.  By paying it you are funding them whether you think  you are or not.  Contact the police and possible 3rd party to get you info back.  Lastly if you suspect someone has log into an account of yours, make sure you change the password immediately.   You should also have 2FA (Two-Factor Authentication) enabled.

I hope this helps you to understand if you've been hacked and to take precautions to keep from getting hacked.  As always feel free to email or message me if you have any questions or concerns.

Starting off!!!

 Welcome to Circuit Stitch!!!!

I plan on using this blog to showcase device repairs, cybersecurity, CTF write-ups, and anything tech related.  I just want to share my love for repairing tech devices, troubleshooting computer and mobile devices, and even share small articles I write weekly for my work.  The articles pretain to tech advice and cyber security.  Thank you for stopping by and please come back soon.